Photography

When we moved from Bodrum to Foça last May, I had the task of cleaning out my studio. It hadn’t had a good spring cleaning in around 10 years, and being a natural pack-rat (a good characteristic for someone who makes collages, but a bad one for someone with a small studio space), I found some things I didn’t even know I had.

One of those things was a series of photographs of an installation I had done while I was at Hacettepe, back in the days before smartphones and wifi, when people still took photographs with cameras that had film and that you could hold in your hands and shuffle around to look at. (Didn’t that used to be fun?)

I am happy to have rediscovered this piece. It was installed in a room/alcove near the entrance to the university’s faculty/grad-student cafeteria. The actual cafeteria was upstairs, but the line to get in was so long that it went all the way down a flight of steps and past my exhibit – so it was as if I had professors and grad students lining up for my exhibit nearly every day!

I have no memory of a title, but I hope that I named it “Calendar Boys”. At any rate, that’s what I’m calling it now. It consisted of a bed covered in pink plush, with a pink plush pillow, pink plus slippers, and a pink plush-covered book hanging over the bed, which was sitting in the middle of the gallery/alcove that opened on to the “lunch line”. The back wall was all windows, and on the other two walls I hung 12 framed black-and-white photos (6 on each wall) of classical Greek and Roman statues – all male nudes.

The installation was set up to encourage people to walk around and look at the photos on the walls

and then to lie down on the bed and look at the pictures in the book.

The pictures in the book were the exact same pictures that were on the walls, except that I had coloured the ones in the book (with a bit of sepia-toned and watercolour photoshopping) to make them look “more realistic”.

Basically, the book was my version of a “pin-up calendar” – except for women: “Twelve Months, Twelve Naked Men”.

(There are 10 more, but these should be enough for you to get the idea.)

As with most of my work, this installation had more questions than answers. The ones I started out with were:

“Why are ‘nude’ statues ‘art’, and ‘naked’ pictures ‘pornography’? Or is that even true?” and “Why is it ‘normal’ to look at pictures of nude/naked women, but ‘not normal’ to look at pictures of nude/naked men?”

After the piece was installed, I had another question:

“Was anyone actually looking at it? And if so, who?”

Since I couldn’t be hanging out unobtrusively in the background every minute of the entire week of the exhibit, that question was going to be hard to answer. Luckily, I was able to get some feedback from the gentleman responsible for managing the activities in the building – who, it turned out, was also very curious about the exhibit, and who was better placed than I was to be able to keep an eye on what was going on in the gallery space (and who was also kind enough to let me take his photograph while he was lying in the pink plush bed, wearing a pair of pink plush slippers, looking at the “Calendar Boys”).

According to my informant (I no longer remember his name), although not so many people were as inclined as he was to enjoy the comforts of pink plush, quite a lot of people – mostly women, and mostly when the lunch line was gone, so there was no one watching – were going up and looking at the pictures on the walls, and then opening up the pink plush book for inspection…. (Note to myself: If I ever recreate this piece, I will have to use a bigger bed, so that the only way to get a hold of that book is to get into bed with it.)

You may have noticed that I haven’t written anything in a while, and that I haven’t posted any pictures of nice-and-shiny artwork, or even rough-and-tumble work-in-progress.

Of course, you may not have noticed, because you were busy doing things in the actual, three-dimensional world rather than (how shall I put this?) “spending time enjoying your vibrant, virtual community”.

Although you could be forgiven for assuming that my not posting can be chalked up to my “spending time enjoying my vibrant, virtual community”, you would be mistaken.

In fact, I have also been busy working.

And not just in the dosh-producing sense of the word, but also in the “production of creative material” sense of the word – although mostly, in the “travelling” and “thinking” senses of the word.

Yes, travelling counts as “creative work”, in the same sense that “research on background” and “sketching” count as creative work. In my case, I like to think that it especially counts, because in addition to just taking the opportunity to refresh the eyes and this sorry old brain with new sensory information, I use the time travelling to take photographs that I use the same way that some artists use sketches – and on occasion I even sit down and do some old-fashioned sketching myself.

Thinking also belongs in the “creative work” box. Despite what some people think. (Here I must interject a memory: While visiting a friend at Hacettepe University one day many years ago, I got involved in a conversation that ended in a now-well-known contemporary Turkish conceptual artist explaining to me, “But Deborah, she (a now-well-known contemporary Turkish painter) isn’t a conceptual artist, so she doesn’t need to have an idea.”

On the other hand, even I sometimes “live too much in my head” and forget that just thinking about a thing doesn’t actually get the thing done. (In that way, “art” is a lot like doing laundry and cleaning the house…) So, when that lightbulb-reminder went off in my head again yesterday, I decided that I was not allowed to have any more ideas until I use up the ones I already have. These include:

1. Sitting down in my studio and doing some more oil pastels of people in the water, using the photos I took in Georgia, Portugal, and the Turkish Mediterranean coast as sketches.

1a. “Shooting” some video interviews of people and their relationships to the water that I can edit to use in an installation with the above-mentioned drawings; interviews to include “individuals who attempted to migrate from Turkey to Greece by sea”.

2. Writing and illustrating a children’s book about “The Adventures of Yellow Dog”. In it, the erstwhile Yaprak is transformed into a doggie who had to leave her home for reasons she is too young to understand, but ends up making friends with a chicken and learning to swim.

2a. And then there’s the sequel, “Yellow Dog and Her Friends”, in which Yellow Dog and her chicken-friend, over much objection from their families, end up visiting one another at their respective homes – and nobody gets eaten.

3. Going back and doing some large (for me) oil-stick drawings like the ones in the “swimmer” series I had started a few years ago and then had to abandon because “the princesses” had taken over my “outdoor studio” so there was no room to work out there anymore.

4. A “film project”. (I have this “wild hare” of an idea to organize a festival, or something, of films on “cultural heritage”… please don’t steal this one…)

5. Paint some more wooden furniture. (This is not as easy as it sounds – if you place the emphasis on “wooden” – because everything these days seems to be made of pressboard and the like. Boo-hoo.)

6. Continue making temporary trash sculptures. (This one should be pretty easy; there’s a lot of trash out there.)

7. Something to do with food! (I’m not there yet…)

8. An illustrated travel book…

9. Painting a mural on the top row of kitchen cupboards. (This was agreed with my husband before we got new kitchen cupboards. The choice was not between whether to paint or not, but between what to paint: 1. Beach scene; 2. Abstract painting of the vastness of the universe, with lots of gold leaf and light blue; 3. Tropical paradise. And the winner is… “3, Tropical Paradise”!

10. Two paintings (oil stick on plywood, 40x40cm, of flower blossoms on a mainly black background with a lot of line drawing done in gold leaf) “commissioned” by my husband in return for making him not hang a painting in a spot that I didn’t want it to be hung in.

There.
A list of 10.
A nice, round number.
“Top 10 Ideas From Amongst Which At Least 1 Must Be Chosen Before Another Idea Is Had”

For a long time I’ve been meaning to write about the Cows of Georgia. I’ve been meaning to write about them, because they were one of the ubiquitous features of our trip to Georgia last summer. But that was a long time ago. So many ridiculous items (‘coups’, orange-haired presidents, dictatorial referendums, etc.) have taken their places on the daily agenda since then that the cows just sort of got left by the side of the road, so to speak.

In fact, during our trip, the cows were more often occupying the center of the road than the side of it. But since the time I decided to write about the Cows of Georgia and the time I actually got around to writing about them, I’ve had a lot of time to wonder why it is that I find cows so fascinating.

Picture: “Hanging out the Laundry” (it’s a box)

I have an ex-boyfriend who grew up in a small town in Germany who once told me he had always wanted to have a cow for a pet. At the time, I thought that was sort of strange. Now, however, I can see the attraction. In addition to the side-benefit of daily dairy products, cows are definitely more human-friendly than cats, and while not quite as cuddly as doggies, they’ve got big, beautiful eyes that they obligingly turn in your direction the minute you point a camera at them – unlike doggies, who instinctually manage to look in the other direction the second you press the shutter (or tap your touch screen).

Picture: Collage with Cows

The cows in the collage above are photocopies of paintings I did of (duh) cows. They are actually pretty small (about 10x15cm), and I did them all in one sitting because I was tired of people looking at me like I had two heads when I didn’t nod yes when they asked, “So, you do oil on canvas?” I made a dozen or so, and hung them in a “3-person-exhibit” at the Gümüşlük Art House shortly after I had first moved to Bodrum. The other 2 ladies exhibiting were as suprised as I was when a French tourist came in and bought almost all of them. “What? Don’t you have cows where you come from?” asked one of the ladies. All I could do was pocket my cash and smile. “Actually, we do.”

But we don’t have them on the beach. At least not on Long Island.

Kadıkalesi is the first place I ever saw a cow wandering on the beach, and I was fascinated. It was not an uncommon occurrence, either. In the wintertime, when the beaches were empty of tourists, they’d be hanging out with their kankas, enjoying a bit of beach grub.

I never did see a cow on the beach during the summer tourist season, but I did get to wondering, and after a couple of cows made their way onto trays that formed a wall installation with a couple of naked Greek statues and some Ottoman women on their way to a hammam (and I am really sorry I don’t have a picture of that), I finally did a picture I called “Cows on the Beach”. It was inspired in part by the witty lady from the exhibit in Gümüşlük.

Picture: Cows on the Beach

But away from the cows of the Aegean and on to the cows of the Black Sea…

Picture: Cows in the Highlands

Yes, there were cows hanging out by the sea in Georgia, and in “the lush Georgian highlands”, but like the ones in Turkey, they were solitary, or with at most a single friend or family member. The ones inland on the way from Üreki to Kutaisi were in herds.

But herd of cows on a highway? Well, no actually…

Returning from Kutaisi, we had apparently hit cow rush hour, and the traffic was horrendous. It was moving in a maddeningly slow pace, and what’s worse, in the wrong direction.

I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but I just don’t have the energy to tease it out. It’s bayram, and the heat wave from Libya has arrived at our doorstep and is expected to last until the end of the holiday.

And then there’s another national holiday coming up, I’m sure, in a few weeks, marking nearly a year since we started out on our Road Trip to Georgia. In fact, the anniversary is not to mark our road trip – but don’t get me started on that, because I don’t have the energy for that, either. Enough to say that last year, we had accidentally decided to take a holiday abroad at a very interesting time. This year, we’re doing it on purpose. And when we get back home, all I want is for everything to be normal again. And I don’t want to have to wait until the cows come home.

…

I hope you all have enjoyed joining me on this vicarious, virtual trip around Georgia and some of Turkey. I know I promised lots of things that I didn’t deliver on (like a description of Zafer and the Laz Beach Party at Limanköy, and more photoshopped bathers, for example), but like I said, and as you know, a lot of things have happened over the past 365 days. To keep up with me on this journey we call – well, this journey we call something or other – feel free to sign up for my Blog, which, I promise, will from now on no longer engage in 10-part series of anything.

And for now, just a few more cows…

Picture: Cows on the Highway

Picture: Cows Still on the Highway, Receiving a Good Talking To

Picture: Cows on the Highway (but at least heading in the right direction now)

When Harun and I planned our Road Trip to the Republic of Georgia, well, as Lou Reed once said, “those were different times”. I know I promised (you and me both) that I’d keep up with the story of the road trip, including photos during and artwork after, but what with coups, bombs, witch hunts, elections, more bombs, even more bombs, and a few mass shootings for good measure, well, it really is hard to concentrate, whether we’re in Turkey or the United States. In an effort to wind up the Georgian Tale before it becomes just a vague memory, let’s move on from Kobuletti to Ureki.

And let me say this: Ureki is better than Kobuletti.

Ureki has magnificent magnetic black sand that is supposed to be good for you.

Ureki has an Azeri kebabci who has his sheep meat shipped in daily on a bus from Azerbaijan to Tbilisi (and who uses fresh coriander in his salad, which is good news for those of us who don’t have the “makes-coriander-taste-like-soap” gene).

Ureki has cheap and cheerful Georgian wine in plastic bottles sold on the street and outstanding wine in real glass bottles available at the corner markets, of which there are many.

Ureki has hotels where instead of a sign reading “no food or drink from outside allowed on premises”, you will most likely find a very large refrigerator where hotel guests are expected to store all the food and drink they’ve purchased from outside and brought onto the premises. (As the best of our hotel’s Georgian Cuisine consisted of what I can only call gruel – although it was damn good gruel – this is a very good thing. Another good thing was that in addition to gruel, our hotel came with a caretaker who spoke rudimentary Turkish from her erstwhile days taking care of old people in Ankara, and she came with a sister just a phone-call away with even better Turkish, since the phone call was to Ankara, where she was still taking care of old people.)

Ureki has touts on the main drag who will help you find a hotel. (This was helpful for us, considering we were among the masses of non-Georgian tourists for whom the Georgian alphabet is very curly – although it would have been more helpful if we had a better command of Russian, which is the language of Georgian tourism, which leans heavily on cars full of families from Russia and Armenia. We managed with “da”, “nyet”, finger-counting and a phone call to a Georgian health-care worker in Ankara.)

Ureki has a parking-area-cum-campgrounnd that is shaded by sweet-scented pines and is right on the edge of the beach. (I can recommend it highly for parking, but less so for camping. Let’s just say that when we decided to make use of its camping potential – along with a number of others with TR plates in amongst the RUSs and AMs – we were treated to a bit of all-night entertainment from a few friendly Georgians who managed to strategically place themselves next to our tent and endulge in a rather boisterous, vodka-fueled party; they were even more friendly in the morning, once they had taken up their hotel-touting positions on the strip – greeting us with a “Good morning, Turk! Perhaps you would like to stay in a hotel this evening?”)

So, now, here are a few lovely photos from the beach at Ureki. (You will notice, I took a few liberties… )